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The Herbal of the Florentine Codex: Description and Contextualization of Paragraph V in Book XI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2018

Victoria Ríos Castaño
Victoria Ríos Castaño*
Affiliation:
Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France
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Extract

In contemporary studies, three texts dating from the second half of the sixteenth century continue to be treated as essential primary literature concerning pre-Hispanic and early colonial medicine. These are the herbal Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis (1552), composed by the Nahuas Martín de la Cruz and Juan Badiano in the Imperial College of Santa Cruz of Tlatelolco; the Historia natural de Nueva España, written by Philip II's protomédico (royal physician) Francisco Hernández, a “scientific envoy” in New Spain in the 1570s; and the Florentine Codex, the only extant manuscript of the 12-book encyclopedia on the world of the Nahuas, Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España (ca. 1577), which was directed by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún.

Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 463 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2018 

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References

1. The bibliography that draws on these three works for an understanding of indigenous medicine is vast. Some commonly cited studies are Beltrán, Gonzalo Aguirre and de los Arcos, Roberto Moreno, Historia general de la medicina en México, Vol 2, Medicina novoshispana, siglo XVI (Mexico City: Academia Nacional de Medicina/UNAM, 1990)Google Scholar; Guerra, Francisco, “Aztec Medicine,” Medical History 10:4 (October 1966): 315–338CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hassig, Debra, “Transplanted Medicine: Colonial Mexican Herbals of the Sixteenth Century,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 17–18 (Spring-Autumn 1989): 30–53Google Scholar; Austin, Alfredo López, The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, 2 vols., de Montellano, Thelma Ortiz and de Montellano, Bernard R. Ortiz, trans. [from the Spanish original Cuerpo humano e ideología: las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas, 2 vols. Mexico City: UNAM, 1980] (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Malvido, Elsa, “Illness, Epidemics, and Displaced Classes in Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” in Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández, Varey, Simon, Chabrán, Rafael, and Weiner, Dora B., eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 82–89Google Scholar; Newson, Linda A., “Medical Practice in Early Colonial Spanish America: A Prospectus,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 25:3 (2006): 367–391CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Montellano, Bernard R. Ortiz, Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Treviño, Carlos Viesca, Medicina prehispánica de México: el conocimiento médico de los nahuas (Mexico City: Panorama Editorial, 1986)Google Scholar.

2. First evidence of Sahagún's codification of data on Nahua medicine surfaces in earlier drafts of the Florentine Codex, such as the Primeros memoriales of Tepeapulco (ca. 1559-61), which contains an anatomical list and a catalogue of illnesses and remedies, and the Códices matritenses of Tlatelolco (ca. 1561-65), in which specific information on medicinal herbs is added.

3. de Sahagún, Fray Bernardino, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 12 vols., Anderson, Arthur J. O. and Dibble, Charles E., eds. (Santa Fe/Salt Lake City: School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1950–1982), Vol. I [the prologues], 54–56Google Scholar. All direct citations of the Florentine Codex are from the work edited by Anderson and Dibble, unless otherwise noted. On the process of composition of this and other works attributed to Sahagún, see García, Jesús Bustamante, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: una revisión crítica de los manuscritos y de su proceso de composición (Mexico City: UNAM, 1990)Google Scholar.

4. Austin, López, “De las plantas medicinales y de otras cosas medicinales,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 9 (1971): 125–230, 127Google Scholar. Paragraph V is available in its Nahuatl version, and translated into English, in Anderson and Dibble's edition: see Vol. XI, 141–191. For Sahagún's free translation into Spanish, see Austin, López and Quintana, Josefina García’s edition, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Madrid: Alianza, 1988)Google Scholar. The World Digital Library facilitates a digitalized copy of the Florentine Codex, in which paragraph V extends from folio 139v to 181r of the third volume. In regard to the disposition of the herbs, it has not thus far been clarified whether there is a plan to the order of the entries, except for the fact that herbs, which appear in entries 1 to 142, make up most of the herbal, as opposed to medicinal stones and other healing sources. These are added at the end of the work, occupying entries 143 to 150, and include such remedies as tiger meat, worms, and healing baths for pregnant women, those injured, and those suffering from scabies.

5. López Austin, “De las plantas,” 127. He repeats his statements in “The Research Method of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: The Questionnaires,” 111–149, and in “Sahagún's Work and the Medicine of the Ancient Nahuas: Possibilities for Study,” 205–224, both included in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The Work of Sahagún, Munro S. Edmonson, ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), 147, 213.

6. See for instance Austin, López, The Human Body; “De las plantas;” “De las enfermedades del cuerpo humano y de las medicinas contra ellas,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 8 (1969): 51–122Google Scholar; “Textos acerca de las partes del cuerpo humano y de las enfermedades y medicinas en los Primeros Memoriales de Sahagún,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 10 (1972): 129–154; “Descripción de medicinas en textos dispersos del libro XI de los Códices Matritense y Florentino,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 11 (1974): 45–136; Austin, López and Treviño, Viesca, Historia general de la medicina en México, Vol I. México antiguo (Mexico City: Academia Nacional de Medicina/UNAM, 1984)Google Scholar; Viesca Treviño, Medicina prehispánica; and Ruiz, Juan Francisco Sánchez et al., “La farmacia, la medicina y la herbolaria en el Códice florentino,” Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Farmacéuticas 43:3 (July-September 2012): 55–66Google Scholar. Several studies concerned with the description of fauna in Book XI also exist. See for example Capesciotti, Ilaria Palmeri, “La fauna del libro XI del Códice florentino de fray Bernardino de Sahagún: dos sistemas taxonómicos frente a frente,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 32 (2001): 189–221Google Scholar; Olivier, Guilhem, “¿Modelos europeos o concepciones indígenas? El ejemplo de los animales en el libro XI del Códice florentino de fray Bernardino de Sahagún,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 32 (2001): 125–139Google Scholar; and Equiguas, Salvador Reyes, “Juego de espejos: concepciones castellanas y nahuas de la naturaleza tras la conquista,” in El universo de Sahagún: pasado y presente. Coloquio 2005, Galván, José Rubén Romero and Máynez, Pilar, eds. (Mexico City: UNAM, 2007), 115–123Google Scholar.

7. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 50.

8. Begun as a monolingual dictionary, popularly titled with the author's surname, the Calepin had by the end of the sixteenth century turned into a polyglot work of vocabulary. The dictionary is known to have influenced other New World lexicographical works, like Fray Juan Baptista de Lagunas's Dictionario breve y compendioso en la lẽgua de Michuacan (1574). See also García, Bustamante, “Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad histórica: claves humanísticas en la obra de Bernardino de Sahagún,” Humanismo y visión del otro en la España moderna: cuatro estudios, Ares, Berta et al., eds. (Madrid: CSIC, 1992), 246–375Google Scholar, 341–342. Máynez, Pilar’s introduction to El Calepino de Sahagún: Un acercamiento (Mexico City: UNAM, 2002)Google Scholar is also an indispensable source for understanding Sahagún's lexicographical interest as she compiles and analyzes references and studies on the subject.

9. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 47.

10. Kintana, Ángel María Garibay suggests Pliny as Sahagún's textual model in Historia de la literatura náhuatl, Vol. 2 (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1953-54), 70–71Google Scholar. Robertson, Donald points to Anglicus in “The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Encyclopedia of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún,” Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale 9:3 (1966): 617–627Google Scholar. For a discussion of encyclopedic and doctrinal works, see Castaño, Victoria Ríos’s third chapter of Translation as Conquest: Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España (Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2014)Google Scholar.

11. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 51, 71. Surviving drafts of this arrangement, known as the Memoriales con escolios, can be consulted in the Códice matritense de la Real Biblioteca, which has been digitized by the Biblioteca Digital Mexicana.

12. See for instance prologues to Books I, IV, VI, VII, X, and XII of the Florentine Codex; Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 50, 62, 65, 68, 73, 101.

13. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 87. This study quotes the Spanish prologues edited by Anderson and Dibble, who respected the inconsistent diacritic and idiosyncratic marks of different sixteenth-century amanuenses.

14. The library of the College of Tlatelolco catalogues these and many other collections of sermons. For a reconstructed inventory, see Mathes, Michael, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco: la primera biblioteca académica de las Américas (Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1982)Google Scholar.

15. Pedro M. Cátedra's study of medieval sermons remains a valuable reference on the use of rhetorical figures and stories in connection with the natural world. See Sermón, sociedad y literatura en la Edad Media: San Vicente Ferrer en Castilla (1411–1412): estudio bibliográfico, literario y edición de los textos inéditos (Valladolid: Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 1994).

16. Roest, Bert, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 211, 286–289Google Scholar. For the use of natural histories and bestiaries as works from which preachers borrowed similes and exempla, see Avelino Domínguez García and Luis García Ballester's introduction to the first three books of de Zamora, Gil’s encyclopedia, Historia naturalis I–III (ca. 1275–1296) (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1994)Google Scholar.

17. In doing so, Sahagún observed the preaching precepts of respected Franciscan rhetoricians like Fray Roger Bacon and Fray Ubertino of Casale. Bustamante García, “Retórica, traducción,” 347–348; Ríos Castaño, Translation as Conquest, 53, 87.

18. This study quotes Anderson and Dibble's edition of the original text in Nahuatl and their translation into English. The original text reads: “choca, pipitzca, vel qujça imjxaio,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 11; “tlatlatole, tzatzatzinj, tlatlatoanj, cochhiçanj,” 28; “teiolitlaco, aiac ica, atle ipan itto,” 122.

19. “Injc vtlatoca, patlavativi: ca noço qujl iauqujzque,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 33; “tlatoa, in veca iuhqujn teponaztli, ic caqujzti,” 91.

20. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 17–18, 125, 108.

21. “Tomaoa, moçooa, mamaçoa, moqujllotia, moqujllotlaça, mopapalotlaça, tlapanavia, tlacaoa,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 108.

22. “Nizcavicuj, njzcaviana, njzcaviixca, njzcavipaoaci, njzcavinamaca,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 65.

23. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 191.

24. “Ic ipan mjtoa in aqujn cenca mopilhoatianj, in mjequjntin onnemj ipilhoan. Maxtenpilhoa,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 139.

25. “In aqujn mjec qujmololoa, qujmoquentia,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 199.

26. “Nechonqua noconqua . . . [,] ipampa in achto tetzoponja ic moqua,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 137.

27. “Nacaxilotataca, nacaxiloquaqua. . . . [C]equj iztac, cequj tliltic: necutzopatic necutzopiltic, aio, aiopipitzictic, ololtic, teololtic, ololpatic,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 140.

28. “Chichic, chichipatic, chichipalalatic . . . [,] ic njnjxamja in azpan . . . [,] njquepaçoiotia in molli,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 192, 193.

29. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, I, 47.

30. López Austin, “De las plantas,” 127–128.

31. The Florentine Codex has the Nahuatl source text on the right and the Spanish translation on the left. The translation is given prominence because, as in the three-column page format intended for the Memoriales con escolios, the work was originally created to have been consulted by members of the Church, that is, Spanish speakers like Sahagún. It is not the first time, however, that one of the two texts is missing; it likewise happens in Book II, on ceremonies, where the first chapters appear only in Spanish and the sacred chants of the appendix only in Nahuatl.

32. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 142, 145. There is only speculation on the identities of the tlacuiloque (painter-scribes) who produced the illustrations. The expressive naturalness of the images and the admirable skill in the detailed drawing of roots, stalks, leaves, fruits, and flowers reveals that they must have had the herbs in sight while performing their task. Sánchez Ruiz, “La farmacia,” 63.

33. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 147.

34. For the most extensive critical edition of the Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis, also known by the name Codex de la Cruz-Badiano, and referred to hereafter as Libellus, see Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis, Manuscrito azteca de 1552, según traducción latina de Juan Badiano, versión española con estudios y comentarios de diversos autores (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, 1991). This edition comprises relevant studies on the context of the work and its authors by Ángel María Garibay Kintana, “Introducción,” 3–8; Germán Somolinos d'Ardois, “Estudio histórico,” 165–191; and Efrén C. del Pozo, “Valor médico y documental del Manuscrito,” 193–208.

35. The format of the Libellus did away with this problem. The drawing of the plant could be larger or smaller, and there was no need to fill a space.

36. “Mjmjltic, xoviac: aqujllo, xochio cueponquj. Injc mjtoa xoxocoiolcuecuepoc: vel velic, qujnenevilia in xitomatl: çanjo iquac in mochioa, in jquac iancujcan qujavi,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 138.

37. “Çan tlanelhoatl. mjmjltic, çan iuhqujn xivitl, amo quauhtic, nextic in jqujllo. In aqujn itipoçaoa, anoço qujnoquja conjz: achtopa poçonj, ic pati: teuhtlalpã in mochioa,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 144.

38. López Austin, “De las plantas,” 127.

39. López Austin, “The Research Method,” 147. He infers this series of questions by concentrating on consistency in answers. Nevertheless, chapter VII includes replies or entries that omit some elements found in the questions and follow an order different from that indicated by the question sequence.

40. Garibay Kintana, Historia de la literatura, Vol. 2, 70–71; Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, 32.

41. Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis, Henry Thomas Riley, trans. (Perseus Digital Library, 1856), 5220–5221. The original reads: “folia habet cyclamini aut cucumeris, non plura iiii, ab radice, leniter hirsuta, radicem modicam . . . , cauda radicis incurvatur paulum scorpionum modo, quare et scorpion aliqui vocavere. . . . nascitur in nudis cautibus, quas aconas nominant, et ideo aconitum aliqui dixere, nullo iuxta, ne pulvere quidem, nutriente. hanc aliqui rationem nominis adtulere; alii, quoniam vis eadem esset in morte, quae cotibus in ferri acie deterenda, statimque admota velocitas sentiretur.”

42. “Ixtlaoacan, çacatzontitlan in mochioa, quamalacachton, xopiazton . . . , atonaviztli, coaciviztli ipaio, çan ontetl, etetl in qualonj, teiolpatzmjcti, tetequjpacho, teamã. . . . Injc qujqua necutli ipan, njnanacaqua, njnonanacavia. In mopoanj, in atlamatinj in cuecuenotl: ipan mjtoa monanacavia,” Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 130.

43. Ríos Castaño, Translation as Conquest, 192.

44. Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, 64.

45. Quintilian, Marcus Fabius, De institutione oratoria, Butler, H. E., trans. (London: Heinemann, 1922), 159Google Scholar.

46. The original quote, in Spanish, appears as an illustration in Anderson and Dibble's edition of Book XI, no page number. It can also be consulted in the World Digital Library, Book XI, folio 180v.

47. World Digital Library, fols. 180v and 181r. Sahagún also names the scribe who took down the informants' accounts as “Pedro de rraquena. v[ecino] de la Cõcep[cion].” See López Austin, “Sahagún's Work,” 211.

48. Sánchez Ruiz, “La farmacia,” 63.

49. Ríos Castaño, Translation as Conquest, 174–175.

50. SilverMoon, “The Imperial College of Tlatelolco and the Emergence of a New Nahua Intellectual Elite in New Spain (1500–1760),” (PhD diss.: Duke University, 2007), offers the most recent and exhaustive study on this institution. See also Kobayashi, José María, La educación como conquista: empresa franciscana en México (Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1974)Google Scholar.

51. SilverMoon, “The Imperial College,” 75–86.

52. Newson, “Medical Practice,” 375.

53. Treviño, Viesca, “Y Martín de la Cruz, autor del Códice de la Cruz-Badiano, era un médico tlatelolca de carne y hueso,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 25 (1995): 480–498Google Scholar, 490; Montford, Angela, Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 57Google Scholar. On the creation of hospitals for the indigenous population, see among others the studies by Guerra, Francisco, El hospital en Hispanoamérica y Filipinas, 1492–1898 (Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, 1994)Google Scholar; Guenter B. Risse, “Shelter and Care for Natives and Colonists: Hospitals in Sixteenth-Century New Spain,” in Searching for the Secrets of Nature, Varey, Chabrán, and Weiner, eds., 65–81; and Venegas, Carmen, Régimen hospitalario para indios en la Nueva España (Mexico City: SEP-INAH, 1973)Google Scholar.

54. Newson, “Medical Practice,” 374.

55. Montford, Health, Sickness, 57; Somolinos d'Ardois, “Estudio introductorio,” 184–185.

56. Risse, “Shelter and Care,” 73, 76.

57. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, 30.

58. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, 123–124. Peláez, Raquel Álvarez has referred to the duties of the titicih in her analysis of the “Relaciones geográficas” of Mexico, Tlaxcala, and Antequera. See in particular La conquista de la naturaleza americana (Madrid: CSIC, 1993), 260–263Google Scholar. See also Viesca Treviño “El médico mexica,” in López Austin and Viesca Treviño, Historia general de la medicina, Vol. 1, 217–230; and Viesca Treviño, “Las enfermedades,” in Beltrán Aguirre and Moreno de los Arcos, Historia general de la medicina, Vol. 2, 93–109.

59. Viesca Treviño, “Y Martín,” 488. For further reference on De la Cruz's social background and duties as a recognized physician of the colony, Viesca Treviño's article continues to be groundbreaking.

60. Viesca Treviño, “Y Martín,” 496–497.

61. The inferred steps in the composition of the herbal suggest that Badiano may have written down what De la Cruz dictated or told him in Nahuatl, and then organized the information as a treatise, modeled on medicinal herbals like the widely circulated Hortus sanitatis (1491). Another work that left an imprint on the contents of the herbal is Pliny's Historia naturalis. See Pozo, “Valor médico,” 194; and Somolinos d'Ardois “Estudio histórico,” 185.

62. Viesca Treviño, “Y Martín,” 494–495.

63. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 94. These three main epidemics have been studied, among others, by Álvarez Peláez, in La conquista de la naturaleza; Cook, David N., Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquests, 1492–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Malvido, “Illness, Epidemics.”

64. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 84, 94. Risse, “Shelter and Care,” 77, states that in 1545 alone this fulminating cocoliztli is estimated to have killed 800,000 natives.

65. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 84.

66. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 95.

67. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 95.

68. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, 85.

69. Somolinos d'Ardois, “Estudio histórico,” 176, 178; SilverMoon, “The Imperial College,” 210.

70. de Mendieta, Fray Gerónimo, Historia eclesiástica indiana, 2 vols. (Atlas: Madrid, 1973), II, 187Google Scholar.

71. Mendieta, Historia, II, 42.